Tough road becomes journey of discovery
Matt Brandau, after Ivy League’s long COVID interruption, returns to lead young Yale team to NCAA quarterfinals
NEW HAVEN — Matt Brandau returned to the Yale campus last fall after more than a year away from the school he loved and the sport that got him there.
Much had changed, including Brandau’s place and perspective, as the program came out the other side of the pandemic. He had gone from freshman to elder with very little lacrosse in between.
“It put a lot of things in perspective,” Brandau said. “How special the program is, how special the culture is. Coming back for the first time, seeing everybody for the first time, putting on the Yale pinnie for the first time was so special. And I think it meant so much more because we had that time off.”
Yale reached the national championship game, losing to Virginia in 2019 as Brandau broke most of the program’s records for
first-year players. When he next took the field, technically as a junior, but starting what would have been his fourth year at Yale he was surrounded by players with no previous college experience.
But if Brandau and the Bulldogs lost more than a year, the program hasn’t skipped a beat. Yale (12-4) defeated Saint Joseph’s last weekend and now heads to play Princeton for an NCAA quarterfinal matchup Saturday in Hempstead, N.Y. The winner gets to championship weekend at Rentschler Field May 28-30.
Yale has 14 players in its rotation who are in their first year, and those players have scored 100 of its 211 goals. Brandau, a first-team All-american, is second in the nation in scoring (6.06 points per game) and goals (3.5). Brandau and seniors Chris Fake and Brian Tevlin form the leadership core.
“It’s very different playing with 30 or so teammates that have very little experience,” Brandau said before practice Tuesday. “For three classes of guys on the team this year was the first time they played a game at Reese Stadium. So it was very different, kind of being thrown into a position of leadership, but the younger guys’ work ethic and willingness to learn has made it as seamless a transition as it possibly could have been.
To be playing Princeton for a chance to go to championship weekend is just icing on the cake off a great, great year.”
Brandau, 5 feet 11 and 185 pounds, from Timonium, Md., has two older half brothers who played lacrosse, including Tim, who played at Bucknell. So Matt and his twin brother Chris, a goalie at Dickinson College, were born into lacrosse, their very first gift a miniature lax.
“It was put in my hand the second I appeared on this earth,” Matt said.
At Boys Latin School in Maryland, Matt played for one of the nation’s premier high school programs. The recruiting process was complicated but Yale coach Andy Shay, who first thought Brandau might be one-dimensional, was finally convinced to take him.
“We assumed one thing, and we were wrong,” Shay said. “Finally one of his high school coaches sent me a text one day and said,
‘If you don’t take this kid, you’re an idiot.’ He’s a chameleon he does whatever the team wants him to do.”
The Yale coaches told Brandau to lift weights relentlessly, and he did, making himself big enough to compete at this level. Most of his skills are obvious by his numbers, others need to be observed and appreciated over time.
“His personality traits have put him in a position where he is one of the best players in the country,” Shay said.
Brandau injured his shoulder in a game against Denver March
13. He went back into the game and scored some more, but then the trainers told the coaches he would be out four to six weeks. He returned to practice four days later and played the next game vs. Cornell.
“He came out in full uniform and avoided me all practice,” Shay said. “Finally, I said, ‘We don’t want you to hurt yourself more,’ and he was like, ‘I’m playing.’ As our trainer said, he’s a lot tougher than we gave him credit for.”
Brandau had four goals and two assists in Yale’s first-round tournament victory, giving him 56 and 41 going into the quarterfinals.
During the canceled 2021 season Brandau, an economics major, took both semesters off, and worked for Northwestern Mutual and coached at Boys Latin School.
“I had some great opportunities to grow personally and professionally and stay attached to the game,” Brandau said. “While the year off was difficult, I got a lot out of it as well.”
The Ivy League doesn’t allow a fifth year of eligibility, or grad students to play, so taking the year off allows Brandau to play this season and next. If he uses the extra year granted by the NCAA due to COVID, he would have to play somewhere else.
All of that will work itself out. Right now Brandau is back on the campus at Yale where the Bulldogs won all eight home games, cherishing another championship chase.
“Our team motto is O-N-E, and it stands for ‘only need everybody,’ ” Brandau said. “From the guys who might not be playing as much to the guys who are playing 60 minutes a game, everybody is willing to do whatever it takes and sacrifice for the greater good of the team. Every member of this team is like a best friend, and it’s like having 50 brothers.”